1. Technical Field
The present invention finds application in the art of sport and leisure and particularly relates to a human body supporting structure and a method of making same.
Particularly, a human body supporting structure may be a bicycle saddle, a seating surface of a chair, a human body protection device, a shoe insole, a helmet, a glove and the like.
2. Description of Related Art
Human body supports, particularly bicycle saddles, are known to include a shell for supporting a user's weight. Certain types of supports are further known to include a load-bearing shell having one or more differently deformable portions, i.e. having a higher resilience as compared with the rest of the shell.
These higher resilience portions, usually located in the areas of contact between the shell and certain sensitive areas of the user, may be formed using a variety of methods.
EP1305203, in the name of the same applicant, discloses a bicycle saddle structure having all the features of the preamble of claim 1. The saddle specifically comprises a load-bearing shell formed from multiple thermoformed sheet elements of composite material which are designed to create differently deformable portions. These portions are formed by interleaving a continuous thermoplastic base sheet element between or among two or more sheet elements of thermosetting composite material, in which apertures have been formed, while taking care that the various layers are laid one above the other to match the apertures.
This prior art method has a few apparent drawbacks.
First, the method is of very difficult implementation, because the apertures of the various sheet elements have to match almost perfectly.
Furthermore, an adequate mechanical strength can be only obtained by laying a considerable number of sheet elements one above the other, wherefore the final product is excessively heavy and poorly cost effective.